


beneath the holy glaze

by allapplesfall



Series: nuclear family disarmament [4]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Sacrilege, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Kristen's Ongoing and Difficult Crisis of Faith, kristen misses her brothers!!!, swearing as catharsis, too many corn jokes lmao, while also grappling with the messy feelings that come from families of origin!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29519478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allapplesfall/pseuds/allapplesfall
Summary: Necessities in hand, Fig returns. She passes Kristen her plastic cutlery and sets the maple syrup in between them. Behind her, Gilear retreats back to his bedroom, probably to nurse his yogurt in peace.Kristen looks at Fig in that goofy way she does before a joke. With a dramatic movement, she drizzles syrup over her waffles. “I baptize you in the name of the Sun, the Grain, and the Holy Growth. Acorn.”Fig narrows her eyes, mouth split in an expectant grin. “What?”
Relationships: Kristen Applebees & Figueroth Faeth, Kristen Applebees & the Applebees
Series: nuclear family disarmament [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2122017
Comments: 16
Kudos: 58





	beneath the holy glaze

**Author's Note:**

> so my mother never lets me take communion at church, because she says i'll be struck by lightning. reading over this fic...i kinda understand why! anyway, it's ash wednesday. have some sacrilege and teens dealing with religious/family crises. you know, as a lenten treat.
> 
> this is set after kristen left/was kicked out of her parents' house and was crashing with fig in gilear's apartment. title is a play on a line from "canons of christianity" by phil ochs
> 
> disclaimer: please don't interpret this fic as me bashing christians! i know there are lots of loving and accepting christians! this is specifically kristen grappling with her feelings about the sect of fantasy christianity she grew up in which was explicitly a staunchly evangelical, hateful and bigoted cult
> 
> tw for fantasy racism, implied homophobia, and kids being kicked out

“Got it!” Fig announces. The freezer muffles her cheer—she has her head stuck fully inside, rummaging around the boxes in various states of expiration. “Looks like the last one.”

“We can stop by the store later,” Kristen says. “I found some silver in Gilear’s laundry.”

Fig emerges, freezer burn crystals dusting the tips of her horns. She grips a flimsy yellow box in her hands. “You _stole_ from _Gilear?”_

Kristen shoves down the remnants of trained indignation at the idea that she would steal and disrespect a parent. It’s _Gilear_. She makes her voice glib as she says, “Hey, I wouldn’t call it stealing. You don’t want to know how many yogurt stains I had to work out of his boxers.”

Fig makes a face somewhere between disgusted and suppressing a laugh. “You’re right, I’m sorry. That’s well-earned money.”

Kristen grins. She holds out a hand and Fig passes her the box.

Kristen might not be any kind of culinary master, but she’s been—she _was_ —her parents’ live-in babysitter for the last three years. She has simple foods down to an art: chicken nuggets, cornbread, mac n’ cheese, hot dogs, canned soup. Most importantly, in this case, she knows her way around a box of frozen waffles.

She pops open the packet of Fantasy Eggos and shoves four into the toaster. To her left, Fig fits her foot into the crack between two of the kitchen drawers and draws her knee up to push herself onto the counter. Kneeling there, she reaches up and pulls their stack of paper plates out of the cabinet.

“I could’ve grabbed them for you, you know.”

“Can it, Applebees,” Fig replies. “I’m an independent woman.”

Kristen raises her hands in surrender.

With exacting precision, Fig fits her nails, coated with chipped black polish, into the stack and peels two plates off. She sets them next to the toaster and sets the stack back in the cabinet before clambering down.

“Couldn’t you have…mage handed that?”

Fig stares at her. Then she snorts, laughing at herself. “You know what, screw you.”

“Screw _me?”_

“You had to go and tell me that _after_ I did all that?”

“You’re the one who wanted to be independent.”

“Well, I was.”

“Sure.”

Fig sticks out her forked tongue. Kristen sticks hers out right back.

“Oh, uh, good morning, girls.” Gilear appears in all his dull-eyed, rumpled glory, stopping short right before the carpet gives way to fake tile. “You two are up…early this morning.”

It’s ten-thirty, but Kristen figures that’s pretty early by Fig’s weekend standards. At home, Kristen would’ve been up for hours by now. She helps—she _used_ to help—Pastor Amelia set up for service in the mornings, sometimes doing an hour or two of solo prayer before the rest of the crowd ambled in. After the sermon, she’d help serve lunch out of the attached kitchen, and then she’d be booked for a couple hours in the afternoon helping out with Sunday school and trying to stop Cork from eating the ornamental corn.

Since crashing at Gilear’s apartment, she’s tried to sync her sleeping schedule to Fig’s night owl one. But something (habit, guilt, the fact that Gilear snores) always manages to wake her up before eight, and then she spends two wonderful hours sifting through articles about faith on her crystal and trying to avoid a total existential spiral so she doesn’t wake Fig.

This is coping. Kristen’s coping.

Absolutely.

“We’re gonna go hang out at Fabian’s,” Fig explains.

Gilear inclines his head. “Ah. I understand.” 

The toaster pops. Kristen fishes the waffles out as quickly as possible, but she manages to burn her fingers in the process. She sticks them in her mouth and sucks them.

“Want a waffle?” Fig asks.

Gilear gives Kristen and the toaster a long, tired stare. “No,” he eventually determines. “Thank you, but I think I’ll stick to my yogurt.”

Kristen shrugs. She pulls her fingers out of her mouth and wipes them on the bottom of her sleep shirt, passing off one of the waffle-laden paper plates to Fig with her other hand.

Fig takes it with a grin.

Gilear hasn’t bothered to buy a kitchen table. He has a coffee table instead, worn and scraped enough for Kristen to suspect it was a curbside acquisition. It sits in the middle of the living room, between the couch where Fig sleeps and the air mattress where Kristen does. Together, the two of them plop down on the floor.

“Shit, silverware,” Fig says. She stands up again and goes to fetch them each a knife and fork.

“Oh, can you grab the syrup, too?”

“Sure!”

“Cool.”

Necessities in hand, Fig returns. She passes Kristen her plastic cutlery and sets the maple syrup in between them. Behind her, Gilear retreats back to his bedroom, probably to nurse his yogurt in peace.

Kristen looks at Fig in that goofy way she does before a joke. With a dramatic movement, she drizzles syrup over her waffles. “I baptize you in the name of the Sun, the Grain, and the Holy Growth. Acorn.”

Fig narrows her eyes, mouth split in an expectant grin. “What?”

“Oh, Helioics baptize babies with corn syrup.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

Kristen shakes her head.

“What do you get out of the deal? A very sticky baby?”

Kristen laughs. “And being saved from eternal damnation. Supposedly.”

“Mmm, yeah, if I bought that, I guess it would be worth it. Still seems like…messy.”

“You have to clean the basin super well to make sure it doesn’t get all crusty and gross.”

Fig tilts her head. “Was that your job?”

“Oh, for _sure_.”

Fig giggles. She takes the bottle herself and tips it. Just as the syrup swells at the cap, she holds it level. “What was it again?”

“Sun, Grain, Holy Growth.”

“Acorn,” Fig cheers, upending the bottle and letting an unholy amount cascade onto her waffles.

A weird guilt curdles in Kristen’s stomach. Her chest constricts, hot and tight. Suddenly, the joke doesn’t feel as funny. It was one thing to crack it as a devoted Helioic, who believed and loved and was able to see the parallel between ritual and mundane and make light of it. But this? This is mocking, right? This is mocking her parents and mocking her community and mocking every version of herself that dutifully scrubbed the baptismal font with a fullness in her heart.

But like—what does that font stand for? That everyone who isn’t doused in clear oil will burn forever? Like she was going to, when Coach Daybreak was going to make her into a _literal hellmouth?_ Which her parents didn’t even _believe?_

That her friends, none of whom would go ten paces into a church of their own free will, all of whom love her more unconditionally than even her own parents (who only want her back if she stops what, wanting truth? Wanting to understand why some people do nothing but good and suffer anyway? Wanting to kiss girls?), are all going to burn?

Everyone smiles at baptisms. Or, well, the babies often cry, because they’re little and overwhelmed and their foreheads are being covered in goop. But everyone else smiles and coos and laughs and squeezes each other’s hands, proud, as their newest member joins their world. Happy. Proud. Full of love, spilling everywhere, catching the light from the stained glass and beaming across the stone floor.

Kristen always smiled.

Smiling about not burning, about being special, when the rest of the world was condemned? About going to Heaven, which Kristen's _been_ to, by the way, and chilling with frat bro Helio forever?

She hates it and misses it and hates that she misses it. But if she can’t go back to that, then what? That’s home. That’s her parents and her youth group and her stinky little brothers with snail trails of snot streaming over their upper lips. And she’d said _family’s a loose word, Dad,_ _a lot of different people can become your family_ , but it’s one thing to hope that’s true and another thing not to doubt it.

Kristen’s learning that she’s really fucking good at doubt.

“Hey.” Fig stops her enthusiastic housing of the waffles and sets down her fork and knife. She reaches over, eyes hooded with concern, and lays a hand on Kristen’s wrist. “You with me, Kristen Applebees?”

Kristen laughs awkwardly. “Ha, yeah. Yeah. Totally.”

“You sure? You zoned out a bit there.”

Kristen looks at Fig. Wonderful, cool, loud, bold Fig, with her reddish skin and piercings and horns poking through her dyed hair.

She remembers one night a few months ago, after she died but before everything truly started going to shit. Her mom had had the ironing board out, pressing polo shirts and slacks and even Kristen’s t-shirts (“They’re wrinkled, Kristen! What kind of message does that send, huh?”). Kristen had been sitting on the couch beside her, idly watching the house hunting show her mom liked. The living room had been dark, lit only by the TV and a small lamp in the corner. Her brothers had already been sent to bed. Bricker had smeared toothpaste all over the sink during their bedtime routine, and Kristen’s fingertips still smelled minty fresh from mopping it up with toilet paper.

“You finish your homework yet?” her mom had asked, as the program broke for commercials.

“Yeah.”

“That’s what I like to hear. You’re making yourself closer to Him through study, you know? We’re proud of you.”

Kristen swallowed and forced a smile.

On the TV flashed a psychedelic ad for cereal.

“That reminds me,” her mom murmured. “I have to buy more corn pops.”

“Mm,” Kristen agreed. Bricker had left an empty box in the cupboard without telling anyone, and there’d been a small brawl this morning when Bucky tried to shake himself out a bowl and got nothing but sugary dust.

A frying egg hissed onscreen. _This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs_.

“Pastor Amelia said you missed youth group on Thursday last week.”

Kristen tensed. “Yeah, uh, I had a project.”

“A project?”

Kristen never used to lie, especially not to her mom. Still, there’s no real way to say, _oh, yeah, I missed youth group because I was committing homicide on the freeway._ “Or, like, one of my friends needed help. She’s going through some stuff, and I’m trying to guide her, you know? ‘Tend the crops that the stalks may grow straight’ kind of thing.”

Her mom set the iron upright. A small wisp of steam floated up. She fit one of Cork’s small polo shirts onto a hanger and hung it off the rack at the end of the board. “I know your father and I have shared our…views about your school. But I feel like I don’t know anything about your life anymore. You used to tell me everything. When did that stop, huh?”

Kristen doesn’t know whether she’d ever told her mother everything. Even if she’d wanted to, her mom worked all day, and usually there were squalling baby brothers to occupy her in the evenings. But she’d felt guilt tangle in her chest all the same. “I could, uh. I could show you some pictures of my friends?”

Her mom had come over and sat beside her, hitting the mute button on the remote control. She smelled familiar, comfortable, like laundry detergent and tonight’s spaghetti dinner. Kristen pulled out her crystal and opened her photo library. She clicked on one of all the Bad Kids, sitting in the shade of the Thistlespring Tree. Adaine had her books spread in the grass in front of her, determined to actually study during their “homework hang.” Gorgug half-laughed, half-winced as he looked at Fabian, who had underestimated the size of a gnome sandwich and had confidently tried to fit the whole thing in his mouth in one bite. Riz had his briefcase flipped open, his newsboy cap askew as he searched for something inside. Fig sat with her back to the tree’s trunk, plucking bass chords with a smile.

She glanced at her mom’s face. She caught the distaste as it twisted her mouth. “Are they all– I mean– Are you the only human in your class?”

Kristen rolled her eyes. “No, Mom.”

“But none of your friends–”

“It’s, uh, like I told you. I’m yeast, remember? Like Helio, with the sinners.”

She managed a strained smile. “That’s real sweet, Krissy. I just don’t understand why you have to be the only–”

“Mom, if you keep saying stuff like that, I’m not gonna show you any more.”

“Alright, alright. But I don’t want to hear anything about this political correctness at the Solstice, okay? Your nana is old, she can’t handle it.”

Swallowing her retort _, lots of old people manage not to be racist, but okay,_ she flipped to the next photo. Fig, showing off some of her old cheerleader dexterity by hanging upside down off one of the branches by her knees.

“So, uh, who’s this?”

“That’s Fig. She’s a bard.”

Her mom looked at the picture for a long moment. Finally, she sighed. “Kristen, honey, I know you’re doing this out of the good of your heart. But I think you need to be prepared…some people can’t be saved, you know?”

“'No seed can grow towards Sol’s light without water.' Pastor Amelia says we should walk through life with a watering can.”

“Alright, alright, there you go with your scripture. I can never argue with you. Just be careful, okay? I don’t want her to– I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She’d pressed a kiss to the side of her hair, then, and stood and turned back to her ironing. Kristen had stared at Fig’s sharp-toothed smile, real estate jargon blurring to static in her ears. Not for the first time that week, she’d found herself wondering—was Sol’s light even something she wanted to grow towards, anymore?

A month later, Kristen had texted the group after she’d stormed from her house, _On the Subject of World Religions_ still glowing in her shaking hands, high on righteousness and anger and what-the-fuck-just-happened. _so I might just have left home?? or been kicked out??_

Adaine had expressed outrage, offering to come over and beat them up. Gorgug asked if she was okay. Riz hadn’t picked up immediately, hyperfocused on case stuff. Fabian called her parents three different hoity-toity flavors of stupid and offered her kippers.

Fig wrote back, no hesitation, _Kristen Applebees, you can come stay with me!_

Fig had flat out refused to stay on her own more comfortable air mattress instead of the lumpy couch. “If you don’t sleep in it, I’ll sleep on the floor,” she’d threatened. That first night, Kristen had tested her, had lain down on the sofa in a borrowed rock n’ roll t-shirt a size too small. True to her word, Fig set her pillow straight on the carpet. Kristen had caved and swapped to the air mattress before Fig died of dust bunny inhalation or something.

She’s been here ever since, and this whole time, Fig’s been nothing but amazing. Feeding her, hugging her. Making her laugh with funny riffs. Doesn’t anybody who preaches hate for Fig _deserve_ to be mocked?

“I, uh–”

Fig’s face stares back at her, so earnest. Kristen looks down at her waffles, probably cold and soggy by now.

“My little brother used to love that joke,” she says. “I had to say it every time we had pancakes or waffles. It wasn’t even funny, after the second time, but he always laughed really, really hard. One time, he snorted orange juice out his nose.”

She doesn’t look up, but she hears Fig snort. “Orange juice? That’s gotta sting.”

It had. Cork had cried, after he stopped laughing. Kristen had healed him up and sat him on her lap, letting him eat from her plate because his own waffles had been drowned in citrus concentrate. Her legs had fallen asleep beneath his deceptive weight.

How is he doing, with her gone? Who distracts him and makes him laugh when their dad starts to go off on loud rants about illegal border crossings at dinner? Who lets him play horsey and cowboy, crawling around the living room with him perched on their back? Who pulls crayons out of his nose?

Who threatens Bricker with death if he touches a single thing in her room? (Has he raided her room, in her absence?) Who pins him to the ground and tickles him so hard he can’t breathe? Who does he go to when he’s embarrassed about struggling with his math homework?

And Bucky? Who does he have burping competitions with during family time? Who shares looks with him when their little brothers are being _so annoying we’re gonna kill them?_ Who cheers extra loudly at his soccer games just to embarrass him? Does he like being the oldest in the house, out from under her shadow?

Are they all gonna turn out as hateful as her parents, without her there to steer them away from it? Sweet little boys all grown up into scarecrow-mask wearing bigots?

Do they miss her?

She misses them.

Fuck, she misses them. Her eyes sting and her lip wobbles and _no_ , she can’t cry about a joke _she_ made about freaking _waffles_.

She scrubs at her face.

“Hey,” Fig says. “It’s okay, the orange juice has probably stopped hurting by now.”

“I think I miss my brothers,” she admits, and the dam breaks.

She sobs. She sobs hard and full, body curling forward, breath hitching. Tears drip onto her waffles—a second baptism, part of her thinks, and then she thinks _, to hell with baptisms_ , and then she cries harder for reasons she can’t even name.

Fig, always so protective, moves around the coffee table to wrap her in a tight hug. Kristen falls into her chest. She needs the contact. She needs it to be tight and squeezing so she knows she’s here, on Gilear’s musty carpet, in her own body. Not floating in a mess of thoughts and memories and that awful emptiness that ripped inside her when she realized her parents loved blind faith more than they loved her. She sobs and it hurts, it hurts so bad. Everything is so _quiet_ , here. Even with Fig’s disproportionately large presence, there’s no background noise, no Bucky yelling at Bricker or Cork giggling or the blaring of video games from the TV. Everything is too quiet and Kristen’s head is too loud and _God_ —

No, not God! God is part of the fucking problem!

She cries harder.

Distantly, she hears Fig saying something she can’t understand. A warm hand—Fig runs warm, startlingly warm, because Fig is part devil because Gorthalax is her father and that’s _great_ , you know what, that’s _beautiful,_ Fig is beautiful and she wasn’t even made in Sol’s image because Sol and the Devil work in the same metaphysical office building and things are totally, completely, nauseatingly random—rubs her back.

“It’s not fair,” Kristen says. It should be fair. Things should be right and fair and true and she doesn’t understand why they’re _not_. “It’s not fair, it’s, it’s–”

“I got you,” Fig says. She holds tighter. “I got you.”

It lasts a while, the crying. At one point, Fig’s body shifts and her hand flaps and Kristen realizes she’s shooing Gilear back into his room. Fig’s dad. _One_ of Fig’s dads. Fig’s dad, through nurture, not nature, who left when he saw who she really was, but who came _back_. Who came back and has her here in this small apartment, even sunk in the swamp of himself as he is, and loves her as well as he can.

Will Kristen’s parents ever want her back? Want her in her entirety, not just the amputated unquestioning parts of herself that fit their expectations?

Even if they don’t, she can’t stay here forever, can she? She only has the clothes Adaine had mage handed out of her bedroom window. Her parents have her birth certificate, her social security information, her insurance and her custody and all the other official-sounding things she’s uncovered in her early morning fantasy googling.

But will they ever love her like Gilear—milquetoast, depressed, yogurt-stained Gilear—loves Fig? Or will they always stare at her like they had before she left, polearms hoisted in front of them, expressions broiled in anger and fear? 

What have they been telling her brothers about her? Do they hate her too? Worse, do they _fear_ her too?

“Hey, I got you. I’m a German shepherd, remember? I got you.”

Eventually, Kristen runs out of tears. She slumps into Fig’s arms, letting the smaller girl hum some weirdly fitting punk song to her.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. Shame creeps in, flushing her cheeks.

“Oh, nuh-uh. No apologizing. It’s _me_. What would you be apologizing to me for?”

“I ruined breakfast and I got your shirt wet and your back’s probably sore from sleeping on the couch for so long, and I should go, right? I’ll go–”

“ _No_ ,” Fig says fiercely. She tugs her back from where she’d been trying to push herself up. “I like having you here, remember? Without you, I have to spend my evenings with _just Gilear_. He has a lot of great qualities—kinda—but conversational skills aren’t one of them. You’re way more fun.”

Kristen lets out a wet huff. “Even when I’m a pathetic mess because of sugary sweet confectionary sauce?”

“Sauce?”

“A syrup is like, kind of like a sauce.”

“Okay, sure. I mean, I don’t wanna call what just happened fun, because I wanna respect your feelings. But if part of what makes you you is that you’ve got some baggage with breakfast foods, then that’s cool with me. I’ll take the whole package, you know?”

The love, the acceptance, the casual unconditionality—it overwhelms her. “Fuck,” she says, because it’s all she can say. The curse word spikes adrenaline in her chest. “Fuck.”

Fig frowns for a second, thrown off, then nods. “ _Fuck_ ,” she says, with gusto.

“Motherfuckers!”

“Motherfucking _fuck_.”

“Fuck!”

Fig laughs. Kristen smiles.

“I love you,” she offers, even though love is a little too tangled in all the things she’s trying to exorcise with swearing. “Thanks for…you know.”

“Aw, I love you too, Applebees. I really am glad you’re here.”

“Yeah?”

“Totally. Cheese and crackers for dinner? Genius shit right there.”

Kristen manages a chuckle. Pushing herself to sitting, she uses the hem of her shirt to mop up her face. A little less snotty, she looks down at the table. “We can stick the waffles in the microwave?”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Fig asks. Heat flares in her palm and then the waffles begin to steam, pooled maple syrup bubbling on the plate.

Kristen grins. “Oh, right. Nice.”

Someone clears their throat behind Fig. “Is the coast clear? May I go to the bathroom now?”

“Sure, Gilear!” Fig calls back.

He emerges from his bedroom and walks quickly to the bathroom.

“You didn’t let him go to the _bathroom?”_

“Hey, you were vulnerable. I take my duties as a guard dog very seriously. No one sees what you don’t want them to.”

Kristen wants to hug her all over again. Instead, she asks, “Did I miss something? Where did this guard dog thing even come from?”

Fig shrugs. “Come on, we better finish eating. We don’t want the gang to start thinking we’ve been kidnapped.”

“Oh,” Kristen agrees, “and they would.”

Picking up their discarded utensils, the two of them dig in.

A little while later, fed and dressed with their faces washed, the two of them file out of the apartment. They stop outside a door down the hall and Fig knocks.

“Coming!” A hurried patter of steps sound from inside the apartment. Riz couldn’t have woken up more than half an hour ago—he usually still needs to put on shoes and buckle his briefcase and fix the buttons on his shirt. They wait for a couple of minutes until the door swings open, revealing all three feet of Riz Gukgak, overdressed and ready for the day.

“Hey, guys,” he says.

“Hey, Riz.” “Hey, dude.”

Kristen offers him a fist bump and he takes it. For a moment, his alert yellow eyes search her face. Can his detective’s perceptiveness spot the puffy skin around her eyes? Do his large ears catch the hoarse note to her voice?

If they do, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he locks the door behind him and hoists his briefcase to his side. His other hand reaches up and latches onto Kristen’s.

“We, uh, ready to go?” he asks.

“ _Fuck_ yeah,” Kristen says, and Fig grins.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! if you liked it, please let me know <33


End file.
